Using a Blog for a Forum

@pcarr We have used the forum feature within a course shell. We didn’t use it as a course, more so as a content repository for helpful documents or websites, and then put the forum widget at the bottom. This is the only way we could figure out to do it but it worked pretty well. This wasn’t open for anyone to enroll. We managed the enrollments but I think it could be done either way. I put an image below of what we did. Hope this helped a little. Happy to answer any questions.

Interesting - thank you for sharing this.  I will give it a try so I may be back to ask some questions.

@pcarr Thanks for sharing your workaround using the course shell. Great idea! We have the same use case and want to have an discussion group (non course or asset specific) for our program staff. I have a few questions about how you did it. First, your welcome and instructions, what training material type is that (file, html, etc.)? Second, does the user have to “Start learning now” to launch? What if the user “completes” the course? Then they have to click “start learning now” again. Obviously this is not very intuitive. I am wondering if you got creative with your course player or other settings to “shield” the user as much as possible from the idea that the forum is a course. I’m playing around and my sample course is acting very much like a course. LOL. 

Sorry meant to tag @GingerG on this post. I see now that your instructions are an HTML learning object so I answered the first question above but I am still having to work out something creative on the whole “course completed” problem probably by adding more learning objects as you did.

Also @pcarr There is a suggestion in the Ideas Portal for a general forum DL-I-1403 if you want to vote for it. 

Thanks @Cindy McElhinney - I just voted for it.  Thanks for the nudge.

@Cindy McElhinney @pcarr 
Hello, interesting topic

In the next months we are going to improve the Q&A area 

A feature we are planning is,  in Discover Coach and Share, the capability for  Q/A widget to restrict them channel specific (or assets specific)

Example

I create the channel “Sales Training”

I create a new Page “Sales Training”

I insert the channels widget selecting single channel and the channel “Sales Training”

I insert the Q&A widget selecting the Q&A of the channel “Sales Training”

Now I’ll have a “Sales Training” page with the sales training content and below the Q&A only relevant to the channel “Sales Training”  (and not all Q&A as before)

Not precisely as DL-I-1403 but i think can achieve the same result, what do you think? 

@Marco.T - it sounds promising though I believe what our user group wants is just a spot to go to for discussions - rather than tying it a channel, asset, or course, etc. What they are looking for is similar to what you see in LinkedIn where you can be on a specific company or group’s page and have discussions or ask questions.  Would this update allow for the inclusion of more than one channel?

@pcarr You are correct, I used HTML and Course Content for the instructions. The user does see Resume Where You Left Off and Start Learning Now. And yes, it will show if they complete the course. We just trained the users to know that they click in and scroll down to the forums. I don’t think they are paying to much attention to the “course” portion. I also set notifications to alert them when someone responded.

The only things I did out of the norm in the Course player is Free Navigation and no Certificate. We didn’t get any complaints so I guess it was an okay work around.   Let me know if you have any other questions! Happy to help how I can.

@GingerG Thanks for the response. I think we can make it work. One more question if I may. I am curious as to how you got the “Lesson” or “Course Content” along with the one line description under each piece of training material in the menu. I am assuming this is CSS. If so, would you be willing to share the code? I have a code snippet that removes “SCORM” from the courses but would love to have it be more descriptive like what you’ve done here. Thanks. 

@GingerG  @Cindy McElhinney - i saw that too!  Would both of you be willing to share as we do not have the CSS expertise here (well we have one but he is incredibly busy). 

@pcarr@Cindy McElhinney Good news...it’s not CSS! It’s under Edit of the Training Material and Additional Info. I’ve put a screenshot below. 

@GingerG - I see how you got the one liner.  How did you change the title of the item from SCORM or File to say “Lesson” on “Course Content”  I don’t see how that is possible.  I may be missing something.

@pcarr Oh I’m sorry! I read that wrong. I changed it in the Localization Tool. @Cindy McElhinney 

@Marco.T Thanks for this inside look at what’s planned for Coach and Share and specifically the enhancement to limit content on a page to Q&A that’s specific to a channel. I am wondering if you have an idea when we might expect this. We are implementing some coach and share functionality for a subset of our users right now and we are finding the limitations a bit frustrating.

Currently the user can assign their question to a channel so that an expert assigned to the channel will get notified and the user can get a faster response which makes sense. And of course, the user can filter the Q&A widget on a page for other Q&A in that channel which is also useful. Here’s where the problems are:

1. If a user clicks on the link to the channel in the Q&A widget, they get the channel content but only assets, not any other Q&A assigned to that channel.
2. Not being able to put a Q&A widget on a page and limit the Q&A by channels is a big limitation.
3. Today I discovered that if you delete a channel, reassign the content as per the associated prompt when deleting that channel, you lose all the Q&A associated with that channel. Poof. Gone! Only assets get transferred over. I would consider this a bug but according to Docebo, it’s “expected” functionality. Noting here in case anyone else might happen upon this unexpected “expected” behavior.

We are definitely looking forward to enhancements here and hoping they come soon! 

Hello @Cindy McElhinney ,about the “specific channel Q&A Widget” we don’t have a specific release date announced yet for the feature, but likely coming in late 2021"

Hi

Great thread!

@Marco.T 

Any update on the Q&A widget?

Cheers

Geoff

@Marco.T @felipe.hernandez can you share any updates that Docebo has made on this? We are finally looking to launch coach and share with various groups, but the current functionality is so limited that we haven’t put a lot of effort towards it. 

Hello @Marco.T 

Any update on the Q&A widget? 

Thanks in advance

Anne

Hi @AnneDubois 

the capability of selecting a specific channel in the Q/A widget is already released and available.

thanks for your interest in DCS 

Marco

Hi @GingerG ! I took you example as a model, so thank you very much. 

Btw, the client asked me if there’s any chance to put in here on demand courses/webinars (still scheduled in Docebo). Is somehow possible? Thanks a lot!

Hi @piacol91. I’m so glad this worked for you! The only way I can think to add scheduled courses/webinars is use the HTML Page Training Material to provide the link to it. It would essentially mark it complete after they viewed the HTML Page so you wouldn’t necessarily know they completed it. Another way you may could make it work is to set up a Learning Plan. Have this model as one course and then the course/webinar you want them to take as another course in the learning plan.

I hope that helps! There may be other ways but that’s all I can think of right now.

This post was insightful regarding the original question of Forums needing to be in a course, at the bottom.  I am just playing with that now to see if I can use this feature.  It works the same still today as the post said. However, I figured out 2 workarounds and will share them.

#1 - don’t show the course, only the Forum

Go to the main Forum Entry page after you have added the Forum widget. Copy the Url.

Use that url wherever you want and upon clicking the url, it goes right to the forum page without any idea that it lives in a class.

#2 - still show the course because you also have content for them to learn or see, but you want to see the Forum more visibly, along with the content

1)Add the Forum to the course...still true.

2)But then add an HTML page and enter the link to the Forum page!  Just make sure you say Parent Frame in the dropdown box.  (The other two options don’t work the way we want them to.)

3)Now your Forum is shown in the Course Materials section as a link.  The user has to click the link so a nice graphic would help make that more appealing since it is a second click for them.

You still also see it at the bottom of the page, but I’m ok with that. Someone here said it would then flag the forum as completed or not completed, so that could be a factor to consider.

I’m going to beta test Option #1 some more.